© Stephen A'Court Christopher Hampson on the web: www.christopherhampson.com Each Summer Christopher teaches at the International Ballet Masterclasses in Prague: www.balletmasterclass.com Christopher Hampson's Ballet.co diaries 1997 - 2006 Interviewed 11 December 2007 Simonetta Dixon reviews

A deep, dull chugging sound outside my door alerts me to the arrival of choreographer Christopher Hampson. I am rather surprised to see that his mode of transport is a G-reg Volvo, just about clinging on to life. Hampson obviously sees the look on my face: as he alights from this clunker, he says with a broad grin “I have tried everything to kill this car, really I have…but it just won’t die!” One of the perils of owning a reliable Scandinavian product is that they just run and run….rather like Hampson’s choreographic career, which had its beginnings when he was just four years old.

“I went with my best friend Melissa to ballet class. I just wanted to go with her. However, she had to stop because she couldn’t skip in time to the music, and I could, so ironically she stopped and I carried on. She is now a lawyer in London; she went for the money option and I went for my artistic passion”

Hampson really got the dancing bug when he was about six. He had started at the Northern Ballet School in Manchester when he was cast to play Trouble, the son, in Northern Ballet Theatre’s production of Madam Butterfly. “I don’t think it was because I was particularly wonderful” he laughs. “It was because I was just about the only boy in the school! It wasn’t actually the dancing that gave me the bug…it was just being in a grown-up theatre. I loved ‘the theatre’ and used to play with pretend ones, and being in a real one was amazing. So dancing was just a vehicle I used for being in a theatre.”

At age 11, Hampson auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, was accepted, and so went to White Lodge and then the Upper School. “I had eight great years there”, he remembers. “It was tough, not all happy-clappy, but so much fun.” In his final year in the Upper School, Hampson auditioned for, and was accepted by, the English National Ballet (ENB). Would he have liked to go to the Royal Ballet? “Yes, but they didn’t take me, so I went for the ENB and it was the right thing to do. I remember Betty Anderton, who had been a ballet mistress there, telling me that it was a great place to be and she was right. I really enjoyed it there.”
 

Christopher Hampson in the studio
© Jan Stary

After spending just two years in the Corps, Hampson was promoted to Coryphée then Junior Soloist, in under four years. He has the most wonderful long, lean legs, so I told him that is obviously why he got such fast promotion! “Oh yes, these legs have carried me far”, he chuckles. They carried him into such main roles as the principal in Balanchine’s Square Dance and one of the diverts in Who Cares. He has ENB’s Artistic Director at the time, Derek Deane, to thank for giving him the opportunity to dance Balanchine ballets. “I had wanted to dance Balanchine for a long time” he says. “I just knew my body was right for it. The technique was right for me: I understood it, I liked it, I understood the musicality required. What I loved about the central role in Square Dance is that it is an adage, and it was so lovely to be able to move slowly on the stage. Usually, as a male dancer, you are either lifting someone or charging round the stage like a bloody firework! It was so nice to do something tender and gentle, yet powerful and dignified, so it still has masculine aspects too. Thinking about it, I often create adages for men in my ballets, and it absolutely comes from Square Dance’s influence on me. The dancers love dancing them, although they get exhausted because of the control required. At first they think ‘what is this mushy crap he’s making us dance’, then they realize how hard it is.”

Despite being a very elegant dancer at ENB, Hampson is known mostly for his choreography. He made his first piece at the age of 16, when he was still at the Royal Ballet School. “I didn’t want to do it, but we all had to choreograph a piece for our A-Level dance course. David Drew and Norman Morrice, who were my tutors at the time, suggested that I enter it into the Ursula Moreton competition, so I did, and I won second place. I was gob-smacked and kind of got the bug from then on. The following year I submitted another piece, and won! It was funny because Kenneth (MacMillan) was one of the judges, and I’d used a piece of Kurt Weill music which was about three prostitutes and their clients….very 1930s Christopher Isherwood type of thing…Kenneth asked me if I knew what the German words meant, and I, slightly embarrassed, said ‘yes’ and he said ‘good…because they’re filthy!’ It was a great feeling to win it, especially because in my year there was also Chris Wheeldon, David Dawson, Matthew Hart, with Cathy Marston and Tom Sapsford a couple of years below. That era has produced about seven or eight good choreographers. Wheeldon started choreographing when he was 11!”
 

Christopher Hampson’s Saltarello for Royal New Zealand Ballet
© Bill Cooper

After having been in ENB for only seven years, and whilst still in his prime, Hampson decided to give up dancing altogether. “I didn’t leave because of illness or injury or anything like that. I could just see that I was really enjoying the responsibility of choreography. I was starting to get commissions from ENB and outside. In my summer breaks I had been doing choreography for galas such as Wayne Sleep’s, and I was finding it harder and harder to go back into the studio to do class and dance. So I just left it; I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought that if I couldn’t give 100%, which you need to in a dancing career, there was no point. In any case, I thought I could have gone back to dancing if the choreography didn’t work out, then I would have closed the door on that side of things and been a dancer again.” Derek Deane was very supportive of his decision to concentrate entirely on choreography.

Hampson’s first three major pieces were all for ENB: Perpetuum Mobile, Country Garden and Concerto Grosso. They were all successful so this gave him the encouragement to branch out and become a freelance choreographer. This was in 1999, and he went straight from ENB to commissions from City Ballet and Royal New Zealand Ballet, with whom he still has a very close relationship. He has been constantly in work ever since then… mostly abroad. Why, I ask him, is that? “I think it’s a combination of things. I like doing full-length ballets. However, they are usually about 18 months in the making. I did Giselle for Prague Ballet, and Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella for RNZB, and that is about a year out of my life each time, so it keeps me away a lot. In this country I’m associated mostly with ENB. I know the Company very well. I am currently on the fourth AD there (Wayne Eagling) and it is interesting for me to see the directions the Company moves in under each one. I am also very lucky that each of them has kept my works in the repertoire, and/or commissioned new ones. However, ENB is not in a position to commission many new works, which is why I need to look outside these shores. It’s also in my interest to see what other companies around the world are doing and are good at.”
 

Jane Turner and Alex Wagner in Hampson's Romeo and Juliet for Royal New Zealand Ballet
© John Ross

We move on to discussing full-length ballets, since this is something in which Hampson is particularly interested. I ask him why there aren’t too many being commissioned these days. “I think most choreographers just don’t think in that way. Financially, the opera houses around the world just can’t afford to take those gambles. It’s not just in the UK. As you know, in ballet there is no dry run, or developing the piece over time. You just do it, and then put it on in front of the public and critics. Everyone is allowed an opinion and that is a very scary thing for an opera house. I think most General Administrators will actively shy away from that because it doesn’t pay. However, it is also the fault of choreographers because most of us just don’t think in terms of full-length pieces.”

With the exception of you and one or two others, I interrupt. Why is Hampson thinking in those terms? “I’m surprised that I do. Most of my early pieces were abstract so that I could learn the vocabulary. But my first narrative piece was A Christmas Carol, then Nutcracker then Romeo and Juliet (which was nominated for an Olivier Award). I just feel like I’ve been learning how to tell a story... developing character, communicating action, focusing the staging. Some of it has worked, and some of it not. With my recent Cinderella (RNZB), I feel that it is really the first time that everything is honed and has come together in the right way and with confidence from my part. I’ve just been talking to David Bintley about this subject, and he was also saying how surprised he is that there isn’t more narrative ballet being made. After all, it’s what the audience wants. Look at ENB’s Snow Queen…it is sold out before anyone’s even seen it. Fantastic! So I’m now cataloguing what I would like to produce as narrative work, and it’s quite fascinating. Stuff such as Poulenc’s Concert champêtre, that’s a definite one. A lot of Martinu, particularly his 3rd Symphony. A lot of Stravinsky, too.”

Having said this, Hampson makes clear that he also enjoys choreographing abstract works because of the choreographic freedom it allows him. I mention Double Concerto, which was a hit with audiences and critics alike. “Oh yes, that was all just in me. I hardly had to think about it; it just seemed almost obvious to me with that music. Of course I had to think about crafting it, but it just flowed out of me. It was so spontaneous…and that came from the score. It was the same when I did Sinfonietta Giocosa (for Atlanta Ballet in the States and ENB) to Martinu’s music. It also just flowed out of me. It came so easily.”
 

As we spoke, the opening of Hampson’s Nutcracker (ENB) was just a few days from opening at London’s Coliseum, for the sixth year in a row. It got mixed reviews when it first opened. “Mixed? I wish. They were terrible!” he laughs. Did that bother him? “At the time, it did upset me a great deal because what was being reviewed was not what I had created at all. It was like seeing some bastard child on the stage. What the audience and critics saw was not what I had created. When it went on in Bristol, much of the set was not even ready at all. I was still choreographing right up until opening day because there were elements that just weren’t there. It was no-one’s fault, just one of those things. It wasn’t a managed production. Also, I was only 28 and didn’t have the vocabulary or experience to know what was really needed. So that was a very hard time for me, and I had to keep going in one direction in the face of adversity.” Matz Skoog, who was AD at the time, was very supportive, and kept it in the repertoire. Hampson has added to the choreography over the years. “I call it refocusing it”, he says. He also got rid of a lot of it that didn’t work. “In its third year I looked at it again and changed things. But one of the problems of a touring company is that you just don’t get many stage calls, so everything is done in a rush. So the transformation scene was given 15 minutes stage time. It just was never tech’d properly. It’s just the way it is.”

Hampson’s Cinderella for RNZB opened in 2007 to excellent reviews. Will we get a chance to see it in London? “I hope so. RNZB are looking to come here in 2009, so I hope they bring it with them.” I ask him to tell me a bit about it. Does it turn pumpkins into carriages? “Well, a little bit, yes! This is the first thing I’ve done where I’ve amalgamated all the versions of the story, the ones I’ve read, seen and danced in. I streamlined Prokofiev’s score and cut a bit from Act 3. I wanted the story to go from a dark place to somewhere beautiful, because the Overture is one of the darkest I know. It’s ironic, for a beautiful fairy tale.” I comment that Cinderella does, in fact, start very darkly and is almost a type of child abuse. “Absolutely. I actually start the ballet at the graveside of Cinderella’s mother. Cinderella plants a rose, which turns into a tree, and that is symbolic throughout the production. The tree is referred to numerous times, and grows into the house, so her mother is always present. Tracy Grant (who designed Romeo and Juliet) did the designs and costumes and they are wonderful. I was very particular this time how I wanted it presented; I was very clear about the route it needed to go.” We continue to discuss the production in a lot of detail, but in case it does get taken outside New Zealand I will not spoil it for the audience by revealing the scenario. Suffice to say that it sounds gorgeous and original.

The three act ballets that Hampson has choreographed all have the ghosts of choreographic geniuses (Ashton, MacMillan, Ivanov) hovering above them. How daunting was this? “Oh very much so, especially with MacMillan because he was so well known. It was very difficult not to be informed by his Romeo and Juliet until I just thought that it’s my heritage and part of me. I didn’t want to copy him and I didn’t. He got it right most of the time, but sometimes he didn’t so I was able to see that and change things my way. Cinderella was much easier because I was doing something very different from Ashton. To be honest, I think that only certain elements of Ashton work here. I don’t feel that he really gets the score. He takes it as whimsical and light, and it’s anything but. I think Prokofiev wins that battle, Ashton doesn’t. There are beautiful things in the Ashton version: the fairy variations, the season variations, the sisters are great fun. So lots I admire, but it was much easier to push that to one side than it was R& J.”

Abigail Boyle in a publicity image for
Royal New Zealand Ballet's Cinderella
© Maarten Holl

RNZB had just been in China when this interview took place, and Hampson had been there with them because they performed his Cinderella and a triple bill with one of his pieces in it. Did the Company go down well? Did the Chinese audience appreciate Cinderella? “Oh yes. The Company was very well received. I wasn’t sure how Cinderella would go down, but I was very surprised because there is some comedy in it and it’s very daunting to try and be funny onstage….and they laughed at the same gags that the Aussies and Kiwis laughed at, so I was very relieved that the comedy worked in such different environments. Anything that made fun of etiquette, they found particularly funny, such as when the sisters are trying to get the prince. The New Zealanders laughed more at the slapstick elements.”

What does the near future hold for this most busy of choreographers? While he was in China, Hampson went to see Hong Kong Ballet and Shanghai Ballet, so they’ve talked about some possible projects. In this country, he doesn’t have anything with ENB this coming year (whereas Hampson likes to work abroad, he would also like to be able to create a new piece here in the UK every 18 months or so), but he has been asked by Ballet Central to create a piece for their 25th anniversary. “I am so delighted to be asked to create something for them. I just love that school and I love what it stands for. Carol Gable is still there doing a great job, and Bruce (Sansom) is also doing really well there. The title of the piece is ‘Capriol Suite’ to Peter Warlock music. I actually used to play it when I was young. It’s only about ten minutes long. So I start that in January. It will be performed in March, but in the meantime I go to the Hong Kong Academy to do something with them, then back here for the Ballet Central performance, then possibly to Atlanta, then to New Zealand in June.” My head is spinning by the time he has finished reeling off this schedule, and that only takes him to the middle of the year! He hopes to be given another commission by Atlanta Ballet because “I love the Company; they are very supportive and I have a lot of freedom in what I can create on them. We have a very good relationship and I like going out there.” He is going to New Zealand to re-stage R& J. “Yes, I’m going to have a fiddle with that. Now that it’s four years old I have looked at it and thought ‘come on Hampson, you can do better than that’.” He is absolutely delighted that Amy Hollingsworth, a close friend, will be guesting with RNZB in R& J. “Amy and I have been trying to work together for years, so I’m really glad she can do this.”

Jane Turner and Alex Wagner in Hampson's Romeo and Juliet for Royal New Zealand Ballet
© Bill Cooper

How does Hampson choose his dancers? “Well, it depends on the piece. I always start by watching them in class, but I also definitely watch them in rehearsal. You can get dancers who are wonderful in class, but as dumb as dumb can be in rehearsal, and I just don’t do stupid! Actually, sorry, stupid is not the right word. I just can’t work with dancers who aren’t curious. I can’t bear it. They need to be able to trust me that I am going to use their bodies in a good way, in the right way. And that’s difficult to find. There are certain dancers I just look at and know they are right.” Such as? “Well, such as Daria Klimentova (ENB). We’ve worked together a lot and will continue working together for a long time, I hope. She loves doing my work, and I love creating things on her. She’s great - a no-nonsense girl, which I love. We can both criticise each other with no offence taken. I love her.

“Daria and I also do these summer master classes in Prague. It’s in its fifth year now and it is SO successful. It was originally Daria’s idea to have a summer school in Prague, and we hire dancers who are at the top of their game who can teach solos, and the feeling of being on stage. We get young dancers from all over the world who come to be coached by these wonderful teachers. We normally take about 100. The minimum age is 16. They can do it for one week or two, and we normally get different teachers for each week so if they are doing both they don’t get bored!! We’ve had great people teach there, such as Tamara Rojo, Irek Mukhamedov, Viviana Durante, Amy Hollingsworth, Maina Gielgud, Jan-Erik Wikstrom and tons more. Prague is beautiful and I love teaching there. This year we will be doing it the last week of July and first week of August. It should be another wonderful year because we have Tamara Rojo and Jan-Erik Wikstrom again. We also have Yat-Sen Chang, Charles Mudry, Tamás Solymosi, Barbara Kohoutkova and Vaclav Janacek, as well as Daria and me, of course!”
 

Christopher Hampson rehearsing Michael Stipa in the studio
© Jan Stary

For the long-term future, is Hampson happy to continue freelancing, or would he like to be, say, an Artistic Director of a company one day? “I am really happy freelancing at the moment, because I can go into a company and do what I need to do to the best of my ability, and that’s a real luxury. However, what is starting to well up in me is the desire to really, really get to know one group of dancers very well, and mould them into a style or a direction. That is what has made me start thinking a little bit about the AD idea. However, it would need to come at the right time in my life, and with a company with whom I could move forward. So I wouldn’t want it at any cost; it wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t happen. I do have a few companies I’m interested in and have my eye on….but I’m not saying which ones!”

And what of the future of ballet and dance in the UK? “This country has a wonderful dance heritage. I think what Monica (Mason) has been able to achieve with her directorship of the Royal Ballet is really to consolidate what is our heritage, our British balletic dance tradition. She’s made us really look at what we have. I do feel that companies of that size have the responsibility to commission new work. I find it amazing the smaller companies commission more new work than large ones do. How do they think companies will move their rep forward? They aren’t commissioning things, just buying them in. It worries me, the thought that artists aren’t being created on enough. If that doesn’t happen, they just become repertory dancers. It is a skill, to be choreographed on, and if it doesn’t happen the skill gets lost. I can often see a divide between those dancers who can and those who can’t. But on the whole, British dance is in a very good place right now. It’s very vibrant and very diverse. But this leads to a trend in choreographers being thrown up then dragged down very quickly. There is no continuity. Whereas this could be very exciting and invigorating, I see every other month ‘the new big name’ that flashes up and everyone runs to see them, but then two years later I think ‘what’s happened to so-and-so? Where are they now?’”
 

Christopher Hampson
© Stephen A'Court

I ask what he thinks of the appointment of Wayne McGregor as the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer. “To my mind this was an excellent appointment. I think it sent out just the right message. That company has a heritage; it celebrates that heritage, but now move on. I think that’s what Monica has been so good for; she just stamped her foot and said ‘this is our heritage, this is who we are, but now this is Wayne McGregor.’ She sent this message to audiences and critics alike. People like myself, Chris Wheeldon, David Dawson…we get tired of people asking ‘where is the new Ashton? Where is the new MacMillan?’ Just get over it…I get a crick in my neck looking that far back. There will be a new somebody else. So the appointment of McGregor by that Company is brilliant.”

Who are the choreographers that have most influenced Hampson? “The usual suspects: Ashton, MacMillan, Balanchine…but also Bob Fosse. I just adore that guy. Also Jerry Robbins and Kylian. However, I keep changing my mind!”

Hampson lives in London with his partner of seven years, Michel. Does he like ballet? “Yes, but he doesn’t come to everything. Basically I decide what we’re going to see and he just comes along. I like going to the ballet with him because it reminds me how ballet is an art form which communicates to a broad cross section of society. He will tell me if he thinks a ballet is rubbish”. Even his own work? “Oh yes, he will tell me if he thinks I’ve gone too far. He’s very French in that he certainly has his own opinions and says what he thinks!” One of the things he likes about his relationship is that he is not living a ballet bubble (“well, except in my head!”). Even at school, Hampson always ensured that he had friends who had nothing to do with dance, and this trend has continued. He finds that he needs that balance in his life “so it doesn’t surprise me at all that I’ve ended up with someone who has nothing to do with dance!”
 


Hampson’s Sinfonietta Giacosa for English National Ballet
© Patrick Baldwin

Since he stopped dancing at such a young age, how does Hampson manage to stay so slim and fit? He used to be a heavy smoker. “Oh God, I used to be very good at smoking. That’s how I describe it. I was brilliant at it. About 30 a day from age 17. Michel doesn’t smoke, so I naturally started smoking less when I was around him, so I dwindled to about ten a day. I gave up a few times but then just stopped on my own. No hypnosis or patches, nothing. I just had the encouragement of my friends.” He has not had a cigarette for just over two years. He has replaced the rather hedonistic lifestyle of his 20s with cycling and running, and is very proud that he has just completed his first half-marathon. “I started running in New Zealand with a friend of mine; what appeals to me is that when you’re running, that’s all you can do. In my life I am always surrounded by people, which I love, but I just love the peace and solitude of running. It clears my head and is a good antidote. In my 20s I did my hard drinking, hard smoking, hard drugs…and I excelled at all of them. I still drink like a fish; I love my wine, I live with a Frenchman for God’s sake!” Does he still have his penchant for Guinness, for which he was justly famous? “Oh yes, I still love Guinness!” He still likes clubbing occasionally, but says that ballet dancers, including him, ‘look silly and pathetic trying to dance in a club’. They can never let go because their muscles are so disciplined! At the age of 34, he now prefers to go out for an hour’s run than to go clubbing.

Aside from running, cycling and choreographing, Hampson loves teaching, especially ‘off the wall’ companies such as Rafael Bonachela and Deborah Colker. “I am so much better at ballet-mastering other people’s works than my own…I’m useless at my own” he smiles. “I love learning the really contemporary vocabulary.” Would or could he choreograph something very contemporary? “I’d like to. I don’t think I could choreograph in that idiom, but what would be interesting would be to work with those types of dancers. They are very organic dancers, and move like Mercury. They are incredible, and I’d love to see where that takes me choreographically.” He also says he would love to choreograph a musical…and an opera. He loves opera. He is always looking around for something different to do. He even recently considered doing an ad….for dancing oven chips!! “I’ve never worked with a camera, in a studio, so when asked I said ‘yes, go on, put my name down’. My attitude is if I’ve never done it before, I’ll try it.” Unfortunately for Hampson’s portfolio and posterity, the client decided to go another route so the dancing chips will have to wait for another time - “Yes, the world will have to wait for my Pas de Frites”.

Let’s hope we do not have to wait too long; an advertising commission would finally afford him the luxury of buying a new car!